Hi there! My name is Amanda Ebbets, and I am currently in my first semester of graduate school at The Citadel. I will be getting my Master of Arts in Teaching Secondary English. I grew up in the beautiful town of Winston-Salem, NC. After I graduated from high school, I attended North Carolina State University in Raleigh where I received my BA in Communication with a minor in International Studies in 2013. I moved to Charleston in the summer of 2013, and since then I have been lucky enough to be able to call if home. In my spare time I love going to the beach with my boyfriend of two years and our two rescue dogs, Tucker and Jackson. I love doing yoga and spending time with my friends and family.
Teaching has always been something I have been passionate about. I spent my college career as a nanny and an after-school counselor for younger children, but it is my love for exploring the realms of literature that inspired me to want to work with high school students. I believe that literature has a way of encouraging people to think beyond what we believe as societal norms. I hope to use this love of literature to create an environment for these young adults where they can discover their true aptitude. I believe that the grander purpose of education is to provide students with the knowledge and tools to make well thought-out, intelligent decisions throughout their lifetimes. I want to use literature and language arts to compel students to think analytically and creatively. I believe that the role of a teacher is to be a leader, a motivator, a role model, and someone whom students can respect and trust. Teachers should also be able to provide a learning environment that is non-judgmental and inspires creativity. As an educator, my goals would consist of teaching students innovative and logical thinking through works of literature, providing them communication and grammar tools so they can be well spoken, letting them them work together so they can learn how to be a team, and providing them with general guidance throughout their high school careers. All students can learn under the right circumstances; it is important for me, as a teacher, to be the motivator and leader that these students need.
Course Goals
The real question is: what don't I want to learn? I have never been extremely technologically savvy. My dad got his BS in Computer Engineering and he currently works in IT security. I have been lucky enough to have him only a phone call away if I ever have computer issues. My solution to any technological issue that I can't seem to fix is to hit the restart button. If that doesn't work, then I find myself saying, "Dad, are you there?" Needless to say, I am very excited to get acquainted with different types of these technological programs and prove to my dad once and for all that I can indeed be an independent, hi-tech woman!
My first goal is for this course is to learn how to adequately administer all of the programs we are going to learn throughout the class. I know, it is a very basic goal. When I say I want to be able to "adequately administer" a program, this includes everything from running the program to troubleshooting as well. Of course I want to learn how to run these programs. I want to be able to make Prezis in my sleep and write blogs backwards and upside down. I want to learn every nook and cranny throughout the program so that I, as an educator, can make sure my students get the most out of these programs. I also want to familiarize myself with the programs that is already being used in the classrooms. I spoke to Ms. Emily Cunning who is the head of the English department at Wando High School in Mount Pleasant, and she provided me with examples of technology that are currently being used in the classroom. Most students there are currently being issued an electronic device through which they are required to submit their work via Google Docs, Slides, etc. It is important to me in this course to go back to the basics of these kinds to programs to make sure I can use them correctly. In addition to learning how to run these applications, I also want to be able to fix any problems or issues that arise with them. In this course, I want to experience these small glitches for myself so in the future I can fix them before they even come up. Technology has always and will always have small malfunctions that we mere humans are not necessarily familiar with. One of my biggest goals for this course is to become familiar with these hiccups so that in time I will know exactly what to do if one comes up in a classroom. The good thing about technology is that a lot of these malfunctions are similar to each other no matter what program is being used, which means I can use experiences I have in this class to help me repair any problems I may have in the future.
Besides learning how to adequately administer the technologies we will be using in this course, I would also like to learn about the tools at my disposal that can help me adjust to the ever changing spectrum that is technology. Social media is a good example of this spectrum. When I was growing up, my generation went through five or six different social media crazes. We started with AIM, an instant messaging program that we used to talk to friends. From there we had Xanga, a blogging website all of my peers were using in middle school. We then moved on to the ever popular Myspace, and from there we went to Facebook and Twitter. These social media revolutions all came to existence within a span of 15 years. These examples just go to show how quickly technology can change without warning. One of my goals for this course is to able to learn tricks and tools that will help me better adapt to the changing technologies. Whether this be following blogs that keep up with current and new computer or mobile programs, or something more traditional, if it is useful, then I want to know about it.
I think that my generation has been lucky enough to be one of the first to witness the impact that technology, such as social media and document sharing programs, can have on society. I also think that it is important for us to make sure we are using this technology effectively to help expand the minds of other people. I am excited to learn about the different programs that this course as to offer, and to be able to develop criteria for those programs that I can use in my future classrooms.
Prezi
For my Prezi project, I chose to present the major themes in Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. I chose this book because not only is it a required reading for 11th grade English at Wando High School, but it is such a dynamic book and I believe it that it provides so many life lessons that students can use. More specifically, I chose this book for the Prezi project because the book has so many elements, and I think teaching those elements through a Prezi would be the most successful way to do it. Through the Prezi, I was able to categorize the four themes I used and then provide examples of each theme through quotations and scenarios from the book. From there, I provided a quotation from a poem that the title of the book was based on, and I made an "In Conclusion" section. This was my way of tying everything together at the end and showing how the four themes intertwined throughout the book.
After using this Prezi in the classroom, I would then give the students an assignment that allows them to dig deeper into the themes. I would ask them to pick a major character from the book and write a paper discussing how the themes were prevalent in their specific character's roles throughout the book. They would have to use examples and quotes from the book. Since the Prezi would have shown the class just how many dimensions are in this book, I believe that this assignment would encourage students to keep looking through those dimensions to analyze the text in a more critical way.
Digital Storytelling
For my digital storytelling assignment, I decided to focus on Night by Elie Wiesel. I chose this book because I honestly think it is a memoir that everyone should read. The first time I read this book I was in my 10th-grade English class. This book led me to my love of literature and storytelling. I remember being entranced by this book and wanting to understand every element of it. It is extremely intense, but I believe that it is so important for people to understand everything that took place during the Holocaust. This book left me wanting to look deeper into what happened during those terrible years and understand how it happened so that humanity does not make those same mistakes again.
As far as this assignment, I decided to do a form of a book trailer using Windows Movie Maker. Since this book is a memoir and is not fiction, it was a little bit more difficult to make a "book trailer" by definition. I made this video to act not only as a book trailer, but also as an introduction to the Holocaust. In my future classroom, I would play this video before we started reading the book. The video introduces the author, Elie Wiesel, and also provides video clips and pictures from the Holocaust. The reason I chose to do my own video rather than create a video assignment for students is because I believe that showing students aspects of the Holocaust through video can be beneficial in helping them understand the severity of the situation. Sometimes just hearing about and reading facts about this type of situation can undermine the horror of what actually happened, and I wanted to make sure that students could truly grasp the intensity of the Holocaust so that they can fully appreciate and respect the book. That being said, since this would be shown in school I tried to keep the extremely graphic content to a minimum. Hopefully, this video can help my future students understand and appreciate the importance of this book and the effect that the Holocaust had on the world.
Editing Assignment
The editing assignment I have created requires the use of Smart Board. I haven't had much experience teaching editing and revisions to students, but I have heard that it is something the requires a lot of creativity in order to keep the students' attention. I have decided to name my activity "Fix That Tweet." This activity would be done in class. I would find several clean tweets from different popular celebrities that are in desperate need of editing, and I would post them one at a time on the Smart Board. I would then let student's volunteer (or I would call on students) to come up to the board and correct the errors in the tweet.
The reason I chose this activity was because I want to teach editing to students in a way they can actually relate to. We all know that the grammar and spelling rules on social media are not quite as strict as the real world, but tweets are something that many students see everyday. If I can teach grammar and spelling to them this way, the next time they look at a tweet they may be editing it in their head, which gives them both grammar practice without them even realizing it. This activity would not only be fun for the students, but it would also be fun for me as a teacher. Not to mention many of these tweets are actually hilarious so I feel like this type of activity will put students in a good
mood. This is also an activity I could use in any grade as long as I can find the right tweets. For more advanced students I can find tweets that have more hidden grammatical errors. For younger students, I can use tweets like the ones to the right which have errors that are more noticeable.
Oral History Project
The oral history project I have created for my students will be given when we have finished reading The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. This novel is based in South Carolina during the 1960's, in the middle of the Civil Rights Movement. For the project, I will have my students interview someone in the local African-American community that experienced the Civil Rights Movement in South Carolina. The person should be old enough to be able to recall life during the movement, which begins in the 1950's. The goal of the interview is for the student to understand what life was like for local African-Americans during this time. When they have concluded the interview, they should be able to relate the experiences that they have been told to passages they read in the book, as well as experiences in their own life. I want this to be an eye-opening experience for my students, and I want them to be able understand some of the history that accompanies South Carolina.
Below, I have posted a copy of the assignment from Microsoft Word. For the project, I will reach out to members of the local African-American community and see if they would be willing to do an interview. From there, I will assign each student his or her own community member to interview. Students will also have the option to find their own interviewee, but I will have to approve it. The interview itself will take place outside of school and should be between 20-30 minutes. It should be recorded by video and then turned into me through email by the due date. After the interview, on a separate due date, I will have the students turn in a reflection paper. I want this paper to focus mainly on the students thoughts and feelings about their interviews. I think this paper will allow students to reflect on their own emotions towards what they heard, and ultimately motivate them to relate to their interviewee on a more personal level.
The grading criteria I will be focusing on for the interview is:
For my Wiki project, I drew much of my inspiration from what we already do in this class. I thought it was a good idea to design my Wiki as almost a virtual classroom for my students. I will post the assignments on the page so that if students have internet access, then I will not have to print a hard copy. I will also include discussion boards for the books we will be reading. The students will be required to comment on their peers' posts as well. Each student will have his or her own introduction page that they will be required to design. They will need to post a paragraph or two introducing themselves with a picture. I have also created a page on the Wiki that I can use for different class materials, such as videos or articles.
My goal for this Wiki was to make it something that the students can utilize to make their lives a little easier, while also allowing parents to see the kind of writing their student is doing. Parents will not be able to comment, but they will be able to see the discussion posts. I will not have the students turn any assignments in on the Wiki except for the discussion posts. I want this page to be a tool for the students; and while I want them to take it seriously, I don't want them to necessarily feel intimidated by it. Below is the link to the example Wiki I created.
One of the things that I think is most challenging for students in an English class is keeping up with the different characters in a particular work. Sometimes students get so focused on just being able to keep the characters apart, that they can’t delve into the actual characteristics of that particular character to truly understand the literature. I think blogs can help with this problem. For my blog lesson, I decided to design it around learning characters. For this assignment, each student would “be” a character of that work. Depending on how many students I have and how many characters are in the book, some characters may be used twice. Each student would be required to write two blog posts a week for the duration of the reading as a journal entry. For my example, I used Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, and I decided to be Elizabeth Bennet.
For this assignment, I really want the students to go deeper into the feelings of their specific character. Since I want my students to do the blogs in the form of a journal entry, I really want them to focus on the themes and feelings of the work, rather than the logistical specifics. For my example, I discussed Elizabeth Bennet’s feelings on love and marriage. In order to do this successfully, I had to take the themes from the book and look at how they related to my specific character. From there, I am able to make adequate observations about how Elizabeth felt about certain things. I also want to make sure that the students are coinciding their blog posts with where we actually are in the reading. I think being able to look deeper at all of the characters allows my students to get a better understanding of the novel as a whole.
Since I am requiring the students to do multiple blog posts, I am not requiring them to be too long. I think 150 words per blog post would be adequate to describe the character’s feelings for certain situations. I used blogspot.com for my example blog and it worked out fairly well, but I am certainly open to using another platform because I am not sure of the rules regarding websites in schools.
In addition to posting on the blogs, each student will be responsible for reading and commenting on at least four other student’s posts each week (two for each blog post). The whole point of this blog is to make it so the students can get a better understanding of every character in the work we are reading. The only way that will happen is if the students read the other journal entries posted by their peers'. I believe this will not only help them keep up with the characters, but it will also give them an opportunity to actually explore these character’s minds in a way they couldn’t have grasped without the blog. Here is my example blog.
Here is a copy of the lesson plan I have created for this assignment.
The article I chose to talk about is one I found on Edtechmagazine.com and is entitled "What Does Amazon Inspire Mean for Education." Amazon Inspire is a digital platform created by Amazon that allows teachers to upload and share their own learning content for others to use and review. The reason I chose this article is because Amazon is already such a large platform with so many different dynamics, and people have been using it for years. It is a company that people feel like they can trust; and now that they are getting involved in the education world makes them even more respectable.
The article states that in addition to teachers uploading their own content, Amazon Inspire will also house over 2,000 "pieces of content" from the Folger Shakespeare Library, which includes a number of William Shakespeare works as well as historical exhibits and works of art. Amazon Inspire will also include interactive sources and content from College Scoreboard. In time, I imagine the sources on this platform will increase as long as the current sources are being utilized and appreciated.
While this article is short, I enjoyed reading it because I fully support what Amazon is trying to do. I think teachers and students can benefit greatly from exploring the work and tools of others. No two teachers are exactly the same, and one of the most basic benefits of school is expose students to a number of different teachers and teaching styles. With this platform, having access to these different teaching styles will be much more convenient than it has been in the past. Since Amazon is such a large platform and so many people know about it, more teachers will be inspired to post their own content on the website, which will allow Amazon Inspire to continue to grow and thrive. The additional resources that this platform will include will also be beneficial to teachers and students alike.
Another reason I think this type of technology can be very useful is because teachers do not necessarily need access to technology in their classroom to use it. Despite the fact that the use of technology is becoming more prevalent in classrooms, some teachers are still having trouble getting access to certain programs. Some districts just don't necessarily believe technology is any more helpful in classrooms than standard lectures. As a result of this belief, teachers may have a hard time using tools like Smartboards or anything that may require internet access. With Amazon Inspire, teachers can download important content onto their computers while they have internet access, and then proceed to use it in the classroom even if there is no or slow internet access to be had.
Another perk of Amazon Inspire is that it is completely free of charge. There is really no excuse for teachers not to utilize this kind of technology if they believe it will benefit their students. The beta program of Amazon Inspire came out in June. The live program has not been released yet, but I believe when it does it will be a game changer for the use of technology in the classroom.
Emerging Technologies
For the emerging technologies project, I decided to design an assignment in which my students will make their own advertisement using a website platform called Audacity. Audacity is a free, downloadable audio recorder and editor. Students can either record themselves using the computer microphone on Audacity, or they can record themselves on another platform, like an iPhone, and upload it to Audacity.
The assignment I have created was inspired by the current presidential election that has been engulfing our country for a while now. The assignment will be done after we have finished reading the poem Beowulf. I would like the students to create a 1-2 minute audio campaign advertisement as if the character of Beowulf was running for president. The students will have the choice to either support Beowulf’s campaign or be against it, but whatever they choose they must use examples from the text to make their argument. Once they have finished editing their advertisement in Audacity, they must upload it to the class Wiki page. They will then need to listen and comment on at least one other student’s advertisement that is a different stance from their own with a follow up argument. After that, hopefully students should have enough preparation to have a meaningful class discussion about the text.
I chose to do this assignment because I think it will give students practice on being able to undercover the most important points in a certain text. Sometimes students can get overwhelmed with literature, especially if it is challenging. Using Audacity, this will not only be a fun assignment to do, but it will also help students learn how to develop a strong argument by only being able to use a certain amount of key points in the 1-2 minute span. They must get creative about how they use the information that is presented to them in the text in a meaningful way. My goal is to make this an enjoyable assignment using literature while also giving them a little real world preparation by teaching them how to make a respectable argument.
Revision: Emerging Technologies
The project I have decided to revise is the current emerging technologies project. The reason I chose to revise this project is mainly because of the platform I chose to use and the assignment I associated it with. The platform I chose to use was Audacity, which is an online audio recorder and editor. I wanted my students to create a campaign advertisement after reading the poem Beowulf using Audacity to edit. On the surface, this seems like a great idea. However, the more I thought about it, the more I started to believe that the platform I chose wouldn’t actually benefit the assignment itself. Audio editors can sometimes be difficult to use, and I think while this assignment may be fun to do, using Audacity may cause more stress with the students than it needs to. If there is anything I have learned throughout this class, it is that as educators we should not use technology for the sake of using it; we should make sure that the technology we use actually adds to the learning experience for our students. I will definitely still use the assignment idea in my future classroom, just maybe using a different platform.
Even though my idea of using Audacity didn’t stick with me, I still like the idea of using some sort of audio platform for teaching. After doing a bit of research, I found a really awesome online tool called VoiceThread. VoiceThread is an online platform that combines audio recording with pictures, documents, and video clips, making what can almost be considered a narrated slideshow. This platform is much easier to use than an audio editor, and it also incorporates different kinds of media, making it more versatile than an audio editor.
VoiceThread is something that can be used for a number of different assignments no matter what grade level the students are in. One idea that I have for using this involves students making their own VoiceThread. Students could take classic work of literature that has been made into a movie, such as The Great Gatsby, and compare the two using clips from the movie with their own narration in the VoiceThread. With the clips from the movie, they could point out exactly where the movie and book differ and where they are the same using the recording aspect of VoiceThread. Students could even use this platform to make the Beowulf campaign advertisement I originally discussed, but they could make some sort of commercial instead of just an audio recording. The only set back with VoiceThread is that it does cost money to set up. However, they have discounts if an entire school or district signs up. Overall, I think something like this would be incredibly helpful to students. Not only would it allow students to practice their speaking skills, but it would also give them an opportunity to get creative with their assignments in ways that an audio editor could not do.
Reflection
There is so much that I believe I will take away from this class. Not only did I get to expand my creativity to create assignments with programs I’ve never used before, but I also got to learn from my fellow classmates ideas as well. Technology is becoming a staple in today’s classroom, and this class allowed me to build on the information I already knew to create the best learning tools for my future students.
The two assignments that I enjoyed the most were the digital storytelling assignment and the oral history assignment. These assignments, in my opinion, were the hardest, but the end results were the most rewarding. These were my favorite because they both required me to pick content that may be uncomfortable for some people and present it through literature. I think this is a great way to encourage students to open their minds to all of the things that literature can teach us, and the technology incorporated only added to that experience. I definitely enjoyed doing the rest of the assignments as well, and I plan to use all of them in my future classroom.
One of the biggest takeaways I had from this class is that we should not use technology just for the sake of using it; we should use it to better the way we teach. I’m so excited to use all of these assignments in my future classroom and I believe all of them will allow my future students to learn material in a more productive way than they would without the technology. My goal for the future is to continue to stay connected with the emerging technology because it is always changing. I believe everything I have learned over the course of this semester will help me adapt and appreciate all of the technology that has yet to come. Thank you Dr. Maxwell, and thank you to all of my fellow students for such a wonderful class!
In a nutshell
Hi there! My name is Amanda Ebbets, and I am currently in my first semester of graduate school at The Citadel. I will be getting my Master of Arts in Teaching Secondary English. I grew up in the beautiful town of Winston-Salem, NC. After I graduated from high school, I attended North Carolina State University in Raleigh where I received my BA in Communication with a minor in International Studies in 2013. I moved to Charleston in the summer of 2013, and since then I have been lucky enough to be able to call if home. In my spare time I love going to the beach with my boyfriend of two years and our two rescue dogs, Tucker and Jackson. I love doing yoga and spending time with my friends and family.
Teaching has always been something I have been passionate about. I spent my college career as a nanny and an after-school counselor for younger children, but it is my love for exploring the realms of literature that inspired me to want to work with high school students. I believe that literature has a way of encouraging people to think beyond what we believe as societal norms. I hope to use this love of literature to create an environment for these young adults where they can discover their true aptitude. I believe that the grander purpose of education is to provide students with the knowledge and tools to make well thought-out, intelligent decisions throughout their lifetimes. I want to use literature and language arts to compel students to think analytically and creatively. I believe that the role of a teacher is to be a leader, a motivator, a role model, and someone whom students can respect and trust. Teachers should also be able to provide a learning environment that is non-judgmental and inspires creativity. As an educator, my goals would consist of teaching students innovative and logical thinking through works of literature, providing them communication and grammar tools so they can be well spoken, letting them them work together so they can learn how to be a team, and providing them with general guidance throughout their high school careers. All students can learn under the right circumstances; it is important for me, as a teacher, to be the motivator and leader that these students need.
Course Goals
My first goal is for this course is to learn how to adequately administer all of the programs we are going to learn throughout the class. I know, it is a very basic goal. When I say I want to be able to "adequately administer" a program, this includes everything from running the program to troubleshooting as well. Of course I want to learn how to run these programs. I want to be able to make Prezis in my sleep and write blogs backwards and upside down. I want to learn every nook and cranny throughout the program so that I, as an educator, can make sure my students get the most out of these programs. I also want to familiarize myself with the programs that is already being used in the classrooms. I spoke to Ms. Emily Cunning who is the head of the English department at Wando High School in Mount Pleasant, and she provided me with examples of technology that are currently being used in the classroom. Most students there are currently being issued an electronic device through which they are required to submit their work via Google Docs, Slides, etc. It is important to me in this course to go back to the basics of these kinds to programs to make sure I can use them correctly. In addition to learning how to run these applications, I also want to be able to fix any problems or issues that arise with them. In this course, I want to experience these small glitches for myself so in the future I can fix them before they even come up. Technology has always and will always have small malfunctions that we mere humans are not necessarily familiar with. One of my biggest goals for this course is to become familiar with these hiccups so that in time I will know exactly what to do if one comes up in a classroom. The good thing about technology is that a lot of these malfunctions are similar to each other no matter what program is being used, which means I can use experiences I have in this class to help me repair any problems I may have in the future.
Besides learning how to adequately administer the technologies we will be using in this course, I would also like to learn about the tools at my disposal that can help me adjust to the ever changing spectrum that is technology. Social media is a good example of this spectrum. When I was growing up, my generation went through five or six different social media crazes. We started with AIM, an instant messaging program that we used to talk to friends. From there we had Xanga, a blogging website all of my peers were using in middle school. We then moved on to the ever popular Myspace, and from there we went to Facebook and Twitter. These social media revolutions all came to existence within a span of 15 years. These examples just go to show how quickly technology can change without warning. One of my goals for this course is to able to learn tricks and tools that will help me better adapt to the changing technologies. Whether this be following blogs that keep up with current and new computer or mobile programs, or something more traditional, if it is useful, then I want to know about it.
I think that my generation has been lucky enough to be one of the first to witness the impact that technology, such as social media and document sharing programs, can have on society. I also think that it is important for us to make sure we are using this technology effectively to help expand the minds of other people. I am excited to learn about the different programs that this course as to offer, and to be able to develop criteria for those programs that I can use in my future classrooms.
Prezi
For my Prezi project, I chose to present the major themes in Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. I chose this book because not only is it a required reading for 11th grade English at Wando High School, but it is such a dynamic book and I believe it that it provides so many life lessons that students can use. More specifically, I chose this book for the Prezi project because the book has so many elements, and I think teaching those elements through a Prezi would be the most successful way to do it. Through the Prezi, I was able to categorize the four themes I used and then provide examples of each theme through quotations and scenarios from the book. From there, I provided a quotation from a poem that the title of the book was based on, and I made an "In Conclusion" section. This was my way of tying everything together at the end and showing how the four themes intertwined throughout the book.
After using this Prezi in the classroom, I would then give the students an assignment that allows them to dig deeper into the themes. I would ask them to pick a major character from the book and write a paper discussing how the themes were prevalent in their specific character's roles throughout the book. They would have to use examples and quotes from the book. Since the Prezi would have shown the class just how many dimensions are in this book, I believe that this assignment would encourage students to keep looking through those dimensions to analyze the text in a more critical way.
Digital Storytelling
As far as this assignment, I decided to do a form of a book trailer using Windows Movie Maker. Since this book is a memoir and is not fiction, it was a little bit more difficult to make a "book trailer" by definition. I made this video to act not only as a book trailer, but also as an introduction to the Holocaust. In my future classroom, I would play this video before we started reading the book. The video introduces the author, Elie Wiesel, and also provides video clips and pictures from the Holocaust. The reason I chose to do my own video rather than create a video assignment for students is because I believe that showing students aspects of the Holocaust through video can be beneficial in helping them understand the severity of the situation. Sometimes just hearing about and reading facts about this type of situation can undermine the horror of what actually happened, and I wanted to make sure that students could truly grasp the intensity of the Holocaust so that they can fully appreciate and respect the book. That being said, since this would be shown in school I tried to keep the extremely graphic content to a minimum. Hopefully, this video can help my future students understand and appreciate the importance of this book and the effect that the Holocaust had on the world.
Editing Assignment
The editing assignment I have created requires the use of Smart Board.
The reason I chose this activity was because I want to teach editing to students in a way they can actually relate to. We all know that the grammar and spelling rules on social media are not quite as strict as the real world, but tweets are something that many students see everyday. If I can teach grammar and spelling to them this way, the next time they look at a tweet they may be editing it in their head, which gives them both grammar practice without them even realizing it. This activity would not only be fun for the students, but it would also be fun for me as a teacher. Not to mention many of these tweets are actually hilarious so I feel like this type of activity will put students in a good
mood. This is also an activity I could use in any grade as long as I can find the right tweets. For more advanced students I can find tweets that have more hidden grammatical errors. For younger students, I can use tweets like the ones to the right which have errors that are more noticeable.
Oral History Project
Below, I have posted a copy of the assignment from Microsoft Word. For the project, I will reach out to members of the local African-American community and see if they would be willing to do an interview. From there, I will assign each student his or her own community member to interview. Students will also have the option to find their own interviewee, but I will have to approve it. The interview itself will take place outside of school and should be between 20-30 minutes. It should be recorded by video and then turned into me through email by the due date. After the interview, on a separate due date, I will have the students turn in a reflection paper. I want this paper to focus mainly on the students thoughts and feelings about their interviews. I think this paper will allow students to reflect on their own emotions towards what they heard, and ultimately motivate them to relate to their interviewee on a more personal level.
The grading criteria I will be focusing on for the interview is:
Wiki
My goal for this Wiki was to make it something that the students can utilize to make their lives a little easier, while also allowing parents to see the kind of writing their student is doing. Parents will not be able to comment, but they will be able to see the discussion posts. I will not have the students turn any assignments in on the Wiki except for the discussion posts. I want this page to be a tool for the students; and while I want them to take it seriously, I don't want them to necessarily feel intimidated by it. Below is the link to the example Wiki I created.
My Wiki
Blog
One of the things that I think is most challenging for students in an English class is keeping up with the different characters in a particular work. Sometimes students get so focused on just being able to keep the characters apart, that they can’t delve into the actual characteristics of that particular character to truly understand the literature. I think blogs can help with this problem. For my blog lesson, I decided to design it around learning characters. For this assignment, each student would “be” a character of that work. Depending on how many students I have and how many characters are in the book, some characters may be used twice. Each student would be required to write two blog posts a week for the duration of the reading as a journal entry. For my example, I used Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, and I decided to be Elizabeth Bennet.
For this assignment, I really want the students to go deeper into the feelings of their specific character. Since I want my students to do the blogs in the form of a journal entry, I really want them to focus on the themes and feelings of the work, rather than the logistical specifics. For my example, I discussed Elizabeth Bennet’s feelings on love and marriage. In order to do this successfully, I had to take the themes from the book and look at how they related to my specific character. From there, I am able to make adequate observations about how Elizabeth felt about certain things. I also want to make sure that the students are coinciding their blog posts with where we actually are in the reading. I think being able to look deeper at all of the characters allows my students to get a better understanding of the novel as a whole.
Since I am requiring the students to do multiple blog posts, I am not requiring them to be too long. I think 150 words per blog post would be adequate to describe the character’s feelings for certain situations. I used blogspot.com for my example blog and it worked out fairly well, but I am certainly open to using another platform because I am not sure of the rules regarding websites in schools.
In addition to posting on the blogs, each student will be responsible for reading and commenting on at least four other student’s posts each week (two for each blog post). The whole point of this blog is to make it so the students can get a better understanding of every character in the work we are reading. The only way that will happen is if the students read the other journal entries posted by their peers'. I believe this will not only help them keep up with the characters, but it will also give them an opportunity to actually explore these character’s minds in a way they couldn’t have grasped without the blog. Here is my example blog.
Here is a copy of the lesson plan I have created for this assignment.
Educational Technology Article
The article states that in addition to teachers uploading their own content, Amazon Inspire will also house over 2,000 "pieces of content" from the Folger Shakespeare Library, which includes a number of William Shakespeare works as well as historical exhibits and works of art. Amazon Inspire will also include interactive sources and content from College Scoreboard. In time, I imagine the sources on this platform will increase as long as the current sources are being utilized and appreciated.
While this article is short, I enjoyed reading it because I fully support what Amazon is trying to do. I think teachers and students can benefit greatly from exploring the work and tools of others. No two teachers are exactly the same, and one of the most basic benefits of school is expose students to a number of different teachers and teaching styles. With this platform, having access to these different teaching styles will be much more convenient than it has been in the past. Since Amazon is such a large platform and so many people know about it, more teachers will be inspired to post their own content on the website, which will allow Amazon Inspire to continue to grow and thrive. The additional resources that this platform will include will also be beneficial to teachers and students alike.
Another reason I think this type of technology can be very useful is because teachers do not necessarily need access to technology in their classroom to use it. Despite the fact that the use of technology is becoming more prevalent in classrooms, some teachers are still having trouble getting access to certain programs. Some districts just don't necessarily believe technology is any more helpful in classrooms than standard lectures. As a result of this belief, teachers may have a hard time using tools like Smartboards or anything that may require internet access. With Amazon Inspire, teachers can download important content onto their computers while they have internet access, and then proceed to use it in the classroom even if there is no or slow internet access to be had.
Another perk of Amazon Inspire is that it is completely free of charge. There is really no excuse for teachers not to utilize this kind of technology if they believe it will benefit their students. The beta program of Amazon Inspire came out in June. The live program has not been released yet, but I believe when it does it will be a game changer for the use of technology in the classroom.
Emerging Technologies
For the emerging technologies project, I decided to design an assignment in which my students will make their own advertisement using a website platform called Audacity. Audacity is a free, downloadable audio recorder and editor. Students can either record themselves using the computer microphone on Audacity, or they can record themselves on another platform, like an iPhone, and upload it to Audacity.
The assignment I have created was inspired by the current presidential election that has been engulfing our country for a while now. The assignment will be done after we have finished reading the poem Beowulf. I would like the students to create a 1-2 minute audio campaign advertisement as if the character of Beowulf was running for president. The students will have the choice to either support Beowulf’s campaign or be against it, but whatever they choose they must use examples from the text to make their argument. Once they have finished editing their advertisement in Audacity, they must upload it to the class Wiki page. They will then need to listen and comment on at least one other student’s advertisement that is a different stance from their own with a follow up argument. After that, hopefully students should have enough preparation to have a meaningful class discussion about the text.
I chose to do this assignment because I think it will give students practice on being able to undercover the most important points in a certain text. Sometimes students can get overwhelmed with literature, especially if it is challenging. Using Audacity, this will not only be a fun assignment to do, but it will also help students learn how to develop a strong argument by only being able to use a certain amount of key points in the 1-2 minute span. They must get creative about how they use the information that is presented to them in the text in a meaningful way. My goal is to make this an enjoyable assignment using literature while also giving them a little real world preparation by teaching them how to make a respectable argument.
Revision: Emerging Technologies
VoiceThread is something that can be used for a number of different assignments no matter what grade level the students are in. One idea that I have for using this involves students making their own VoiceThread. Students could take classic work of literature that has been made into a movie, such as The Great Gatsby, and compare the two using clips from the movie with their own narration in the VoiceThread. With the clips from the movie, they could point out exactly where the movie and book differ and where they are the same using the recording aspect of VoiceThread. Students could even use this platform to make the Beowulf campaign advertisement I originally discussed, but they could make some sort of commercial instead of just an audio recording. The only set back with VoiceThread is that it does cost money to set up. However, they have discounts if an entire school or district signs up. Overall, I think something like this would be incredibly helpful to students. Not only would it allow students to practice their speaking skills, but it would also give them an opportunity to get creative with their assignments in ways that an audio editor could not do.
Reflection
There is so much that I believe I will take away from this class. Not only did I get to expand my creativity to create assignments with programs I’ve never used before, but I also got to learn from my fellow classmates ideas as well. Technology is becoming a staple in today’s classroom, and this class allowed me to build on the information I already knew to create the best learning tools for my future students.
The two assignments that I enjoyed the most were the digital storytelling assignment and the oral history assignment. These assignments, in my opinion, were the hardest, but the end results were the most rewarding. These were my favorite because they both required me to pick content that may be uncomfortable for some people and present it through literature. I think this is a great way to encourage students to open their minds to all of the things that literature can teach us, and the technology incorporated only added to that experience. I definitely enjoyed doing the rest of the assignments as well, and I plan to use all of them in my future classroom.
One of the biggest takeaways I had from this class is that we should not use technology just for the sake of using it; we should use it to better the way we teach. I’m so excited to use all of these assignments in my future classroom and I believe all of them will allow my future students to learn material in a more productive way than they would without the technology. My goal for the future is to continue to stay connected with the emerging technology because it is always changing. I believe everything I have learned over the course of this semester will help me adapt and appreciate all of the technology that has yet to come. Thank you Dr. Maxwell, and thank you to all of my fellow students for such a wonderful class!